


Hugs

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
Genre: Comfort, Female Player Character (Hogwarts Mystery), Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hogwarts Mystery - Freeform, Unnamed Female Player, Will likely border on angst in some chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-11-07 02:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Juggling a life of underage cursebreaking, magical education, missing relatives, and general Hogwarts shenanigans has a way of getting you down sometimes. Luckily, this Cursed Vault Kid gets by with a little help (and comfort) from her friends.





	1. Rowan

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by ["Hugs"](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/460550) by Slytherforthestars. 



> I did a set of headcanons about hugs a while back and---because they wouldn't leave me alone once they were done---now here is an expanded set of snippets stemming from those headcanons. Because who doesn't need a little fluff in their life once in a while?

_"Rowan’s hugs linger, tight and fierce and comforting against whatever comes your collective way. Hesitant at first, in the stiff way of someone who hasn’t many people to hug, but easier and more frequent with every passing year and every vault she nearly loses you to."_

  
                                                                                                                                  ~

  
     "Do you think," Rowan sighed into her best friend's hair, her arms looped around the other girl like a vice. "--that we could manage at least one year without a near-death experience? Just one?"

  
    "Naturally? I doubt it. Unless you've found some sort of new spell that guarantees a safe, quiet school year..." The friend in question propped her chin on Rowan's shoulder as she fought the urge to sink into the bed just a few feet away. Dueling was tiring under any circumstances, but dueling an Acromantula seemed especially exhausting. Perhaps it was the mental terror of staring at those pincers. And the outrageous number of legs...She shuddered and held on to Rowan tighter. Either way, she felt as wrung out as one of Filch's scrub rags.

  
    But, as ready as she was to fall into bed and sleep for a month, there was no avoiding Rowan and the protective fretting that had no doubt been building all evening. If she looked, she suspected she might find tracks worn into the dormitory's carpet from all the pacing. She had been pounced upon the instant she stepped through the door, fussed over and interrogated in the same breath until the story of the latest vault poured out of her. Rowan hadn't let go of her since, though they had migrated from their awkward huddle in the doorway to a more relaxed perch on the edge of Rowan's bed.

  
    "Hmm. I'll look into that." Rowan made a thoughtful noise, as if truly considering the possibility that there might be just the right book hiding in some forgotten corner of the library. The girl in her arms snickered, and Rowan chuckled back. If only.

  
    "If you tell Pince what you're looking for, she'll probably trip all over herself to help. The library would be a much quieter place if we weren't holding strategy sessions there so often, you know."

  
    "Well, maybe she'd be more fond of the rest of you if you came to actually study once in awhile..." Rowan said pointedly, though the rebuke was softened with an extra squeeze.

  
    "When, I ask you," The other girl tilted her head to yawn into Rowan's shoulder. "--have I ever had the energy for extra studying? Between regular classes and prefect prep and the vaults and detention---did I mention that I'm probably headed for a good long detention after what happened tonight?---I'm barely scraping by!"

  
    She felt an arm unwind from its position around her shoulders to reach up and pat her disheveled hair. The gesture was rather stiff, but the intent was nice. She had the feeling it would get better with practice, much like Rowan's hugs had.

  
    "Also, if we don't actually go to bed soon, I'm going fall asleep on you."

  
    Rowan snorted, but didn't let go.

  
    "I don't mind." The embrace tightened, warm and comforting and enough to blot out the madness of another night of cursebreaking. It always was. "I'm just glad you're here."

  
    "Me, too, Rowan. Me, too."


	2. Ben

_"Ben is hesitant about most things except for his hugs. It’s always a bit unclear whether he’s aiming to offer comfort or to receive some himself when he opens his arms, but that gentle squeeze and ready kindness helps all the same when the world is frightening even to you."_

  
~

  
   She woke with the shrill laughter of her boggart ringing in her ears, a shriek rising in her throat, and a gentle hand shaking her insistently awake. She bolted upright from where she'd drifted face-first into her textbook, wild-eyed and breathing hard. A quick glance around the room confirmed that no one had noticed---how could they when most of her classmates were dozing, too?---but that did little to calm her thundering heartbeat. The laughter faded off into Binns' droning about some distant, dusty battle, but the panic coursing through her veins did not. Nor, thankfully, did the hand on her shoulder.

  
   "Alright?" Ben asked softly, almost too softly to be heard over both Binns and the covert game of Exploding Snap that Jae and Diego were running in the back corner of the classroom. He gave her a rueful smile when she managed only a stiff nod in response. "No, you're not. I know a nightmare when I see one; I've had plenty of practice. What was that?"

  
   "Boggarts," she whispered hoarsely back. "Voldemort boggarts."

  
   Ben shuddered and went as pale as the paper dragons whizzing back and forth between Charlie's desk and Tonks'. Muggleborn though he was, it hadn't taken him long to pick up the wizarding world's fears along with his own. She didn't think it was quite fair given how many things he was already afraid of, but there wasn't much she could do about that particular crisis. No one escaped Voldemort. Or at least the fear of him. A chill ran up her spine at the memory of how the boggart spun and shifted into the pale face, the red eyes, the leering grin...Not even she could escape that fear. Even now, long after the boggarts from the Vault of Fear had been vanquished, the dreams came back to haunt her every few months. Especially at times like these, when she barely had time to think about anything outside of the next vault and when all the fears those boggarts _really_ represented weighed on her almost too heavily to bear.

  
   "Do you want a chocolate frog?" Ben broke through her scattered thoughts again, already nudging her arm with a familiar purple box. "They always help calm me down after facing something particularly terrifying."

  
   "Maybe you should keep it, then. For the next mess we get into." She flashed the reassuring smile she usually reserved for both Ben and the first years in her charge as a prefect, but it came out too wobbly to be genuine. There was always another mess of one sort or another on the way, and she would have to be strong again. It was just harder to maintain the facade when she was still frazzled from fear and half-asleep from a night spent hunched over the clues her brother had left behind.

  
   Ben frowned and shoved the frog at her again, more firmly. She sighed. Ben might not have Rowan's outspokenness, but he could be just as stubborn in his own quiet way. It wasn't worth arguing. She reached out to accept it and found that her hand was trembling. And even though she yanked it back as soon as she realized, it was clear that Ben had noticed, too. He blinked at her with dawning panic of his own, then scooted down the shared bench to wrap his arms carefully around her shoulders before she even had a chance to protest.

  
   "I'm...I'm not good at this sort of thing," he murmured. "And I don't know much about being brave. But I do know that even though you're the bravest person I know...you're allowed to be scared sometimes, too."

  
   Ben jumped and instinctively held on tighter as an explosion from the game behind them rattled the desk, then went on with only a faint tremor in his voice. "Merlin knows I am."

  
   She stifled a shaky chuckle and slumped against Ben's side. Fear wasn't a sensation she often had time for. There was always something to investigate, a friend to help, a battle to fight...and never any time to recover from any of it apart from times like these when it forced its way to the surface. It came in her dreams, whether she was safely tucked up in her dormitory or huddled in the back row of the History of Magic classroom and whether she was ready for it or not. Not that she ever was.

  
   Ben gave her a final squeeze before he let her go, but he stayed close enough for his shoulder to knock against hers as he reached for the chocolate frog to break it in half. At least she didn't have to be scared alone. Sometimes, that was enough.


	3. Penny

_"Penny checks her hands once, twice even, before she tugs you into her arms to say thank you for hunting down that spare cauldron or rubs your back to soothe the sting of tonight’s Great Hall gossip. Even so, touching her comes with the risk of brushing against the remains of any number of dangerous potions. It’s still worth it."_

~

She slipped into the Artifact Room with a spare cauldron tucked under one arm and a sense of foreboding weighing heavy on her shoulders. It wasn’t unusual for Penny to ask for help for one project or another, but it _was_ strange for her to send the Fat Friar to accost her on her way to the Great Hall for dinner, begging on Penny’s behalf for a spare cauldron to be delivered to her favorite clandestine brewing spot. Penny certainly got in less trouble than most of her friends, but after the day she’d had, she wasn’t keen on trouble of any sort. Still, a friend in need was a friend in need.

"You brought it!" Penny grinned at her from where she sat cross-legged in front of her own bubbling cauldron, a collection of open books and half-empty ingredient jars scattered around her and a sack of sandwiches heaped precariously close to the cauldron. "You're a lifesaver, you know that?"

"All in a day's work. Besides, the Fat Friar did make your request sound pretty urgent...What are you making anyway?" She leaned over the cauldron from a safe distance to get a better look at the hazy green concoction, then hastily retreated as the smoke rising from its surface stung her unprotected eyes. She could never be quite sure with Penny's potions. Some were as mild as pancake syrup while others seemed to border on illegality. Still, given how similar her own “hobbies” were, she couldn't blame the other girl for liking a bit of variety. She set the requested spare cauldron down as gently as she could—just in case the new experiment had any explosive tendencies—and settled on the floor next to Penny to investigate.

"I'm not entirely sure," Penny murmured absently, stretching forward to sprinkle an assortment of unidentified  powders and elixirs into the new cauldron. "I know what effects I'm looking for, but I think we'll have to wait and see what I actually end up with after the second brewing stage and the combination of the two halves of the potion."

"That sounds a bit ominous."

"Maybe, but that’s half the fun.” Penny grinned as wickedly as her angelic face would allow and dug into the bag of sandwiches to offer one to the other girl. “Sandwich? You don’t have to, of course—no need for you to skip dinner to watch a pot just because I am, but I thought you might like—"

"I don't mind. Pot-watching is a lonely business, after all. You shouldn't have to do it all by yourself. And I’m in the mood for some peace and quiet, anyway."

“Peace and quiet? You?” Penny narrowed her eyes shrewdly, almost as if she’d been waiting for something to pounce on. “Are you alright?”

"I...I'm fine. Just a bit tired of crowds,” she muttered around a bite of ham and cheese. Penny could always be trusted to see right to the heart of things, even when she didn't particularly want her to. It was true that she was always ready to pitch in with tasks like fetching emergency cauldrons, but tonight did involve a certain amount of ulterior motive. With Rita Skeeter's latest appearance and her accusations about the source of the school's many curses, Hogwarts had been buzzing with rumors and gossip all day. Most of it about her. When she got the chance to avoid dinner in the Great Hall and the parade through the gauntlet of whispers and stares that came with it, she had pounced on it.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with that reporter, would it?"

" _No."_

Penny arched a brow at her and took a casual bite of her own sandwich, apparently content to wait for the truth.

"Maybe a little." She heaved a sigh and wilted against the shelves at her back. More than a little, really. After a day of catching first-years whispering about her in the common room or scurrying to the opposite side of the hall to avoid her in passing and watching her fellow troublemakers glare at her from across the room in detention, she felt ready to explode from the tension of it all. "It's just that it's been five years. I was hoping most people would be past believing that I'm some sort of walking curse by now! It doesn't usually bother me that much anymore, but it gets...hard to stomach sometimes."

"I know, and I'm sorry people are being so horrible about it again." Penny let out a sympathetic hum and dropped her sandwich back in its paper wrapper. She dusted off her hands on her robes and leaned over to hook an arm around her shoulders that—despite smelling slightly of powdered newt and essence of dittany— made her feel more relaxed than she had ever since that rotten beetle of a woman had come nosing around again. "After so many years of you risking your neck for ours, they really ought to be more grateful."

"Well...they can't all be as understanding as you Hufflepuffs." She snickered at the huff of indignation that comment prompted, but didn't protest Penny's hand rubbing comforting strokes up and down her back.

"Maybe not," Penny said primly, her gaze shifting back to the tiny flames blazing beneath each cauldron and turning slightly steely when she spoke. "But that doesn't excuse their unkindness."

The room went comfortably silent apart from the cheerful pops and gurgles of the potions and the distant rumble and clatter of the Great Hall. She frowned then, mulling over the oddity of the situation. Who at Hogwarts knew every tidbit of gossip that traveled through its corridors? Who would never be the last to know about anyone’s hurt feelings? And who could concoct a last-minute friendly ambush better than anyone else?

"Penny, did you actually need to borrow my cauldron?"

"No," Penny admitted as she flashed a subtly sly smile and gave her friend another squeeze around the shoulders that warmed her all the way through. "But _you_ needed to be borrowed for a while, so I improvised."

She let out a bark of laughter and let herself lean into the snug embrace. "Are you quite sure you shouldn't have been sorted into Slytherin?"

"Hufflepuffs are allowed to be clever, too. Particularly when we're looking after our friends."

"Well," she said, savoring the fact that the hurt and irritation of the rest of the day had been pushed to the back of her mind—at least for the moment—by something so simple. Hiding from the world in a quiet room didn't really fix any of her troubles, but at least it gave her a moment to breathe (even if the air was newt-scented). The gossip would still be there tomorrow, but facing it would be easier with the knowledge that she didn't face it alone."You certainly have a talent for that."


End file.
